Interfirm Networks: An Introduction

The organization of interfirm networks, such as alliances, joint ventures, cooperatives, franchise and retail chains, has become an important research topic in the field of organizational economics, strategic management, and organization theory. Organizational economics refers to the application of agency theory (Blair and Lafontaine 2005), property rights theory (Hart and Moore 1990; Baker et al. 2008) and transaction cost theory (Williamson 1991; Marcher and Richman 2008; Meiseberg and Ehrmann 2013; Mumdziev and Windsperger 2013), and strategic management as well as organization theory refer to the application of resource-based theory (Barney and Clark 2007), knowledge-based theory and organizational capability theory (Teece et al. 1997; Nonaka et al. 2000; Helfat et al. 2007), real options theory (Reuer and Tong 2005, 2007) as well as the relational governance perspective (Dyer and Singh 1998; Gulati 2007; Arranz and Fdez. de Arroyabe 2012; Griessmair et al. 2014). More recently, a promising research direction is the use of multi-theoretical perspectives to explain formal and relational governance issues in interfirm networks (e.g. Combs and Ketchen 1999; Poppo and Zenger 2002; Mayer and Salomon 2006; Mesquita et al. 2008; Hendrikse and Feng 2013; Jell-Ojobor and Windsperger 2014).